The father called Trappist Caskets two years after his child had been delivered dead. He had not been able to move on from his regret and anger at being asked to shove his child out of sight.

Trappist Caskets cost between $1,200 and $1,500. The company ships about 40 caskets and 25 cremation urns in a typical week, said Sam Mulgrew, a layman who directs the business.

Sam Mulgrew sold his hand-made casket business to New Melleray, and he now manages the production operation of Trappist Caskets. The monks own thousands of acres of woodland, from which the wood ...

Summer or winter, the day begins hushed and in darkness. The Cistercian monks of New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Iowa, rise at 3:15 a.m. and walk the unlit limestone corridors ...

“This is the least (the monks) feel they can do,” Marjorie Lehmann, administration director at Trappist Caskets, said Thursday, March 12. “It’s a beautiful act of love.” ...

Stepping out of their usually reclusive lifestyle, Trappist monks at an Iowa abbey plan to sell their handcrafted wooden caskets to the public for the first time since the retreat was founded in 1849.

A Trappist casket is boxed for loading. In the middle of the night, a driver hauling a 53-foot dry van pulls into a truckstop. Soon a hearse pulls up behind the trailer. The driver gets out of his ...

Trappist Caskets offers two models -- simple and premium. Simple caskets are smooth on all sides. Premium caskets feature complex raised-panel joinery and shaped lids. Both come in two shapes ...

In the meantime, I spend my days as a wood-worker at Trappist Caskets where I craft the lids of simple wooden caskets for people I will never meet. I also bless every casket I make and, once again ...

“Trappist Caskets” has a nice ring. Sources of income for the world’s 169 Trappist monasteries vary. One hot new idea, which has been picked up by New Melleray Abbey in Iowa, is coffins.

Trappist Caskets cost between $1,200 and $1,500. The company ships about 40 caskets and 25 cremation urns in a typical week, said Sam Mulgrew, a layman who directs the business.